The most value-laden tripe I've read all day. From the term 'dominant' in the first sentence, to this gem:

The sad truth is, once the humans get out of the picture, the outlook starts to get a lot better," says John Orrock, a conservation biologist at the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis in Santa Barbara, California.

'Domination' and 'better' are social constructions, especially silly when discussing the fate of teh earth.

This article is nothing more than conservation biologist emo angst. FOAD glasses boy.

Alien visitors coming to Earth 100,000 years hence will find no obvious signs that an advanced civilisation ever lived here.Yet if the aliens had good enough scientific tools they could still find a few hints of our presence.

One can only hope, seeing as they've mastered intergalactic space travel and all.

That's probably on the checklist of things to bring with them:- Food- Fuel- Scientific tools

They will probably be most puzzled by how a society of 6 billion just one day disappeared all at once. We should leave a note.

The Olduvai cliff will begin and permanent blackouts will occur worldwide, according to "The Peak of World Oil Production and the Road To The Olduvai Gorge" by Richard C. Duncan.

Terence McKenna's Novelty Theory claims that time is a fractal wave of increasing novelty that ends abruptly in 2012.

December 21 - End of the great cycle of the Maya calendar's Long Count and a 26,000 year planetary cycle in the Aztec calendar, and thus the end of this Baktun (the end of the cycle is dated December 22 or December 23 by some calculations).

According to the 1997 book The Bible Code a meteor, asteroid or comet will collide with the Earth. Some believe this means the world will end. This event was supposedly prophesized by John the Evangelist as Wormwood in the Book of Revelation.

Tibetan Monks specialising in remote viewing predict that divine extra-terrestrials will intervene at a point where the world's governments are about to deploy weapons of mass destruction. Adding to this, the Tibetan Monks say that the world is not ready to be destroyed and that our Earth is blessed and being saved continuously from all kinds of hazards that Mankind is not even aware of.

The Prophecy of the Popes, attributed to Saint Malachy, speculated that Pope Benedict XVI would reign during the beginning of the tribulation which Jesus spoke of, and sometime later a future pope described in the prophecy as "Peter the Roman", the last in this prophetic list, would appear, bringing as a result the destruction of the city of Rome and the Last Judgement. . It is possible that Benedict XVI and Peter the Roman are the same person, according to some interpretations.

Charismatic Korean religious leader Sun Myung Moon is talking extensively about the End of Restoration in 2012, and beginning of a New Sinless Time for Mankind.

Some postulate that a Galactic SuperWave (A galactic superwave is a large quantity of gamma rays which are released at somewhat regular intervals from a Pulsar) will strike the Earth around the 2012 time frame, as discussed by Dr. Paul LaViolette. Also see Dr. Paul LaViolette bio, and Insight.

Imagine what the earth would be like without us on it right now, oh right the earth would have plunged into another ice age and most of the world would be covered in ice./hurray for global warming.//Boo alarmist environmental wackos

What good would all this "utopia" do, if there were no humans on earth to enjoy it? We are just as much a part of nature as any other animal. Why some humans do not believe this, is beyond me. Why some humans hope for their own demise so nature can flourish, I cannot comprehend. I fear most of these people with this attitude have no connection with nature at all, but live in a fantasy world.

I imagine that I'll have another Diet Mountain Dew, go about my day, and later in some private moment, consider how lucky I am to be on this planet, in this time, in the country I call home, in the relatively comfortable circumstances my income allows.

This world would not so much be better off without us here as be different. Yeah, we keep a messy house, but our species on the whole is doing ok, and I like to think that this Universe (if not the planet) is better off for us being here.

Perhaps some day we'll run into another species out there (points up) that will say so. We have the potential, if we'll cut the self doubt bullshiat and stop staring at our shoes.